Takenori Emoto

Takenori Emoto is remembered in Japan less for his pitching than for one sentence: roughly, "I can't play baseball because the bench is full of idiots." A pitcher who says that in public should be finished, yet the line outlived his career and became folklore. Look at the rest of him and it stops being an outburst. He was 188 centimeters tall, out of Kochi by way of Hosei University, and he pitched for the Toei Flyers, the Nankai Hawks and then the Hanshin Tigers through 1981, reportedly clashing with his club over something as trivial as hair growing past his ears. The man simply would not be managed. Afterward he built a second life as a commentator, a television personality and a politician, and was decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun. The famous quote wasn't a slip. It was the whole personality, said out loud.

Name (English)

Takenori Emoto

Name (Japanese)

江本孟紀

Born

July 22, 1947 (age 79)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Boar

Origin

Tosayamada, Kōchi Prefecture, Japan

Height

188 cm

Occupation

baseball player / actor / politician / tarento

University

Hosei University

Awards & achievements

• The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.emoyan.com/
• Xhttps://x.com/emoto_takenori
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%9F%E6%9C%AC%E5%AD%9F%E7%B4%80

Tags

• Kōchi Prefecture
• baseball player
• actor
• politician

Last updated

2026-07-27

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.